Revolving Door Newsletter: 12.07.10

The New Yorker Poaches Times; Another AOL Spin-off?

December 7, 2010
Tumblr went down for 24 hours and everyone freakedthehellout. The company apologized for the inconvenience, blaming planned maintenance that accidentally took down a critical database cluster. It's totally the worst when that happens. The outrage was palpable, but life will continue, especially for those billions of people who have no idea what Tumblr does. (If anything, maybe the coverage will make the microblogging service more popular?) But at least there were new memes created. And that's really what matters. Right?...

AOL is considering breaking itself up and then merging with Yahoo!. The company would sell its dial-up business. Talks are in the "Tim Armstrong and Carol Bartz have coffee" stage (or however these things begin), so don't expect an announcement anytime soon if one comes at all... Ciro Scotti, former managing director at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, will assistTina Brown as she fights to combine The Daily Beast and Newsweek. Scotti hasn't been formally hired, but he'll be key in the decision-making process regardless. Elsewhere at the combined company, Kathy O'Hearnsigns on as vice president...

Conde Nasters Jacob Lewis and Dana Goodyearlaunch Figment.com, a site for adolescent writers... Paul O'Regansteps in as director of marketing and communications for Europe at Burberry... People's Revolution publicist Felix Carrizo moves to Pedro Garcia as PR director... And there are changes at SourceMedia, APCO Worldwide, and more...